Strong partnerships spanning an array of sectors—including public health, housing, education, transportation and others—are the bedrocks of healthy communities. How do they evolve and what makes them successful?

When Mercer Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey, planned to close its doors more than 10 years ago, many in the community were alarmed by the likely impact on health services available to the city’s large, low-income population. Encouraged by Mayor Douglas Palmer and the State Department of Health, two hospitals, a federally-qualified health center, and the city health department came together to consider how best to meet the needs of Trenton residents.

At the time, many of these providers knew one another more as competitors than as collaborators. But they recognized a shared commitment to Trenton’s most vulnerable residents and set aside potential rivalries to form the Trenton Health Team. Today, that team links more than 60 behavioral, social service, educational, and faith-based organizations to pursue better community health outcomes.

Leaders from Louisville—one of seven winners of the 2016 Culture of Health Prize—share how artists can play a role in creating healthier, more equitable communities.

Smoketown Women's Mural by Steam Exchange and Smoketown community members.

Our Louisville, Kentucky, neighborhood of Smoketown sits across the street from the largest concentration of health care services in our state. Yet people here live 9 years less than the typical Louisville resident. Poverty, racism, unemployment and other social determinants of health have created this gap between residents of Smoketown and those from more affluent parts of the city.

An artist’s creativity has helped make that disparity concrete. Andrew Cozzens’ Smoketown Life Line Project documents the impact of trauma on many aspects of people’s lives and health, as revealed through interviews with more than 20 local residents.

You see the impact in metal rods of different lengths—each representing the length of one community member’s life. Crimps in the rods marked with bands of color represent adverse experiences—violence (red), addiction (white), incarceration (black), trauma (blue)—showing how lives have, in effect, been shortened.

For the first time ever, the CDC and CDC Foundation are providing city and neighborhood level data for 500 of the largest U.S. cities, making it possible to identify emerging health problems and effective interventions.

Old Colony YMCA in Brockton, Massachusetts recently discovered something startling: a single neighborhood more burdened by poor health such as asthma, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol than surrounding areas. Most surprising, however, was that this particular area had a lower prevalence of unhealthy behaviors like binge drinking than other locations within Brockton.

In the past, public health officials may have expended limited resources on the entire Brockton metropolitan area because they wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint the specific neighborhood facing the spike and determine why it was happening.

Community Health Funds (CHFs) are a new way to make communities healthier while reducing costs and supporting collaboration. A new project is asking communities to share and spread lessons from CHF and other health partnership experiences.

Over 80,000 children in Massachusetts suffer from asthma which, when left unmanaged, can dramatically impact overall health, limit school attendance and physical activity. In many cases, uncontrolled asthma symptoms lead to costly emergency room visits. Treating this problem on a large scale will take more than inhalers—it requires coordinated community action. Through the Massachusetts Prevention and Wellness Trust Fund (PWTF), Lynn, Worcester, Holyoke, and other cities have formed community-based partnerships to address several chronic conditions, including childhood asthma. Thanks to these efforts, families receive education, care management and home visits to better manage childhood asthma and ultimately improve their daily lives.

Since underlying social, economic, and environmental factors influence community health issues, the solutions to these issues need a cross-sector approach. But this is sometimes challenging since stakeholders can lack funding and incentives to collaborate.

PWTF was created to address this dilemma. It is a Community Health Fund (CHF)—a financial trust to address local health priorities and promote prevention. CHFs have emerged as an innovative approach for coordinating strategy and shared, flexible funding that supports community stakeholders to work together.

Mandela MarketPlace understands that community members hold the key to positive change. By lifting up a culture of community ownership, Mandela is increasing access to healthy food and sustainable business opportunities.

Sixteen years ago, I embarked on what I thought would be a year-long project to help the residents of West Oakland gain reliable access to affordable, nutritious food.

More than 23.5 million people live in low-income areas that are more than a mile from a supermarket, according to the USDA. That includes West Oakland, one of the city’s poorest areas. The community has a high rate of crime, pollution and unemployment—along with dozens of liquor stores and fast food outlets. Health outcomes are dismal; residents are two times more likely to be born at a low birth weight and 2.5 times more likely to die of stroke than residents in the nearby affluent area of Oakland Hills.

A $10 million grant opportunity, designed to benefit the Gulf of Mexico region, will advance the science and practice of fostering healthy communities that can prepare for, withstand and recover from adverse events—and even thrive afterwards.

Few of us have forgotten the searing images of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, especially how the great American City of New Orleans was left in shambles—a testament to longstanding social and economic problems that preceded the storm and a nation that was unprepared after it occurred.

In the decade that followed Katrina—one that included the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history—recovery across the region has varied, but there have been several success stories. For example, New Orleans, that soulful town, overhauled its health and public health systems, improved access to nutritious food and fitness activities, and put new emphasis on issues of equity and poverty. The work is far from done, but the transformation was sufficient to earn a Culture of Health Prize from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in 2013.

That’s why the situation for schools in Lawrence, Mass., was particularly concerning back in 2010. At the time, more than one out of every four Lawrence kids dropped out of high school. This led the Massachusetts Department of Education to put Lawrence’s schools into receivership by 2012, placing them under new management to safeguard state assets. The state-appointed “receiver,” was granted authority to develop an intervention plan to overhaul the schools through steps you might expect such as expanding the school day and replacing half the districts’ principals.

But the district also took one critical step by acknowledging that a family’s financial stability strongly influences how well children do in school—and whether they drop out.

Lessons from Washington State show a culture shift can lead to healthier lives.

About 15 years ago, non-profit and public service providers in Cowlitz County, Wash. were trying to figure out why—despite great planning and programming—there were still problems in the neighborhood that made the most 911 calls. The prevailing wisdom was that the neighborhood was dangerous because it was dark outside people’s homes, and it stayed dark because people liked it that way. It helped conceal criminal activity. But the coordinator for the service collaborative knew she needed to engage with residents and learn what they thought. So to start to figure out what was happening, she went house by house to talk to people.

As those discussions with community residents grew, it became clear that residents saw things differently.

Urban planning plays a role in addressing health challenges in America and can help give everyone the opportunity to live their healthiest lives possible.

More perhaps than any place in the world, the New York metropolitan region is known for its urban form—its physical layout and design. From the Manhattan skyline to the neon lights and tourist-packed streets of Times Square to the rolling hills and winding paths of Central Park, New York’s built and natural environment is part of what makes it such a vibrant, dynamic place to live. The distinctive form also has important health impacts. But, as discussed in a new report, State of the Region’s Health: How the New York Metropolitan Region’s Urban Systems Influence Health, these impacts are often poorly understood.

The report, written by the Regional Plan Association (RPA) with support from RWJF, provides an in-depth look at health in the New York metropolitan region, where 23 million people live in cities, suburbs, villages and rural communities stretching from New Haven, Connecticut to Ocean County, New Jersey. It finds that New York region residents live longer than U.S. residents overall, but they are not necessarily healthier.

Researchers: RWJF wants to fund your best ideas, and most rigorous study designs, to help us learn what works to promote the health of everyone in America.

What does it take for Americans to lead healthier lives? Seems like a simple question, but it takes research to get answers we can act on.

Research is how we will discover what happens to resident and community health when a low-income community in Seattle—pocked with aging infrastructure and troubled, publicly subsidized housing—is transformed into one that sports mixed-income housing, new parks and services that support well-being. It’s a way we can measure the value of litigation aimed at forcing school districts in California to comply with state requirements for physical education in schools. Through research, we can pinpoint whether the presence of children in a defendant’s life influences sentencing decisions. And only through research can we further understand how criminal sentences impact the overall health and living arrangements of these children.

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